10.02.12

With large companies such as Amazon bastardising Android by selling it down the river to Microsoft, Google is left almost alone here, along with a newly-acquired part of Motorola. But that is not enough. As one reports puts it, “Google’s $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola may not have given it the legal ammo it expected to acquire, based on a court ruling in Germany. Several Motorola devices were found to have infringed an Apple patent. “Google is in a bad position, because this is something they license to all mobile phone manufacturers that use Android,” noted law professor Christal Sheppard.”

We must remember that Apple relies on US bureaucracy (e.g. ITC) where corporations control the government and can impose unjust sanctions. It’s a sort of systemic corruption. There is also control of the media (by corporations), not to mention lobbying. Florian Müllerthe liar keeps promoting his funding sources, too, invalidating his claims by forced disclosures. Jonathan Corbet has been quoting him and got berated for it in the comments at LWN. He too seems to realise that it is not a wise thing to do anymore.

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Samsung and Amazon would do well to mind what Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1738: “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.” Or, as others have paraphrased, “they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Never deal with a terrorist, which means to never settle with the likes of Apple or Microsoft. I’m not really exaggerating, either, if you think about it. With Windows’ market share and endless security vulnerabilities, Windows is by far our greatest national security risk. At least some of the European companies are waking to the advantages of FOSS’ modular operating systems that do not have baked-in backdoors. Then there’s Apple, and I don’t think Al Quaeda hates freedom and choice half as much as Apple. What is really sick is how the Apple blatantly copies of others’ technologies, and then the repackaged copies are hailed as innovations. Please. The irony is how often the iTards have used the phrase ‘slavishly copied’ particularly in reference to Samsung in light of the iPhone5. Previously, telling the look and feel apart between Apple and true smartphones was easy. Now, there is no doubt where Apple got their look. Had the iPhone5 come out before the Galaxy SIII, I might have paused before denying their copying claims. Now, though, it’s easy to see who ‘slavishly copies’ who. The irony is that we will no doubt hear cries of how the SIII copied the iP5.

I do look forward to MS going the route of SCOX, although Apple will probably sadly survive in a minor market slice. After all, PT Barnum was right; an iTard is born every minute!

If Apple is in a fragile state, then that is good news for freedom and choice. They have to be regretting the Samsung win now, because it is exposing just how flawed a person has to be to see things their way. That jury spokesman just turns the tide against Apple every time he opens his mouth!

Apple gets most of its money from iPhones – and, yes, as the competition heats up there they need to find other areas to be successful.

It will be interesting to see if Apple has learned from its own history – Apple was massively influential in building the desktop paradigm we use but they were beaten by a company who copied much of what they did, made something that was “good enough”, and licensed it to many companies to sell. Google is the MS if the 80s and 90s… though MS made money by selling products and Google makes its money by collecting data on people and monitizing it. At one time I think the people of Google were proud to “Do no evil” but that time has passed.

Microsoft's charm offensives against Free/libre software are proving to be rather effective, despite them involving a gross distortion of facts and exploitation of corruptible elements in the corporate media

A British MEP criticises Battistelli and the management of the European Patent Office (EPO) while Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, UK Minister for Intellectual Property, gets closer to Battistelli in a tactless effort to improve relations